Film Festival To Celebrate Women`s Accomplishments

International Women`s Day, March 8, will provide the finale for a four-day festival of films by and about women organized by the Chicago group Women in the Director`s Chair.

The festival will be held at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave., from March 5 through 8, and includes a number of Chicago-area premieres.

The opening-night presentation is a film by German director Doris Dorrie, made just prior to her art-house hit, ``Men.``

Titled ``In the Belly of the Whale,`` it`s the story of a teenage girl who leaves her emotionally disturbed father, a policeman, to look for her long-absent mother; the father, in his rage, treats the girl`s disappearance as a kidnaping case.

The film will be shown at 8 p.m. March 5, following a 6 p.m. reception. The program on March 6, as well as the all-day screenings (11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.) on March 7 and 8, will be divided between video presentations in Facets` Theater 1 and film showings in Theater 2.

The short works to be screened have been gathered into various thematic groupings (``Rhythms,`` ``Survivors,`` ``Revelations,`` ``Conspiracies``) and include animations, documentaries, and dramatic sketches.

A panel discussion at 4 p.m. March 8 takes ``Women and Media in the

`90s`` as its theme, and features as participants filmmakers Mary Filice, Tami Gold, Sylvia Morales, Michelle Parkerson and Debra Zimmerman.

The all-day screenings will include a tribute to Women Make Movies, a national feminist media center that has helped to produce more than 40 films since its founding 15 years ago and also has maintained a distribution network, a film study center, and an archive devoted to women`s films.

Admission to all programs is $5; a festival pass is available for $35. For more information, call 281-4988.

Also to be screened is Katz`s 1978 ``Splits,`` derived from a Jorge Luis Borges story, which J. Hoberman of the Village Voice called ``a visual triumph--witty, formally inventive, and filled with narrative ideas.``